Australian scientists are asking the public to contribute photos of sea lion snouts to help develop a new method of identifying the animals.

Whisker Patrol, a new project based at Western Australia’s Curtin University, is investigating the possibility of identifying sea lions by their “whisker spot patterns”.

Dr Chandra Salgado Kent, senior research fellow at Curtin’s Centre for Marine Science and Technology, said the long-term aim was to obtain more information on the ecology of sea lions, which are an endangered species.

“The population is relatively small here in Western Australia, so we really want to get a feel for whether the population is increasing, staying stable or decreasing,” she said.

“If we are able to to identify a method for reliably identifying individuals over time, then we can actually obtain accurate estimates of population size as well as look at their residency patterns and how they’re using habitats and areas, and how far they actually move between islands.”

Dr John La Salle, the director of the Atlas of Living Australia, a CSIRO project that incorporates data from “citizen science” projects similar to whisker patrol, says “these sort of projects are important for a couple of reasons”.

“One is that you can get a big pool of people that are interested in gathering data, and it can really promote a great deal of data and answer specific questions in a short period of time,” he said.

“The other area where it’s extremely valuable is it’s really engaging people in science, and building a culture of science in Australia, so it’s taking people who are interested in science and getting them involved in doing it.”

Readers can contribute photos of sea lions from Western Australia and South Australia at the Whisker Patrol website. If you are photographing a sea lion, please be aware that they are a large wild animal that may respond if threatened. Always remain at least 10 metres from sea lions and observe the other guidelines here.